Must-read article for anyone who has been investing any significant time or resources into link building efforts.

From the original article intro: "The Google Penguin updatehas changed the link building process forever. Gone are the days when it was easy to rank for desired keywords by building tons of links using exact keywords as the anchor text.

In the wake of Penguin, uncertain exactly where the thresholds and ratios are. Just how well distributed should our anchor text be in order to get the best results?

We have been busy with research on the subject and, not too long ago, discovered what Rand Fishkin at the SEOMoz blog had to say for their Whiteboard Friday series. Much of what we’ve observed has fallen in line with his predictions."

Co-Citation is a popular similarity measure used to establish a subject similarity between two items. If A and B are both cited by C, they may be said to be related to one another, even though they don’t directly reference each other. If A and B are both cited by many other items, they have a stronger relationship. The more items they are cited by, the stronger their relationship is

Translate this idea to your specific reality, niche or industry and you have a great approach that integrates storytelling in its DNA and a fantastic way to always have interesting and attention-grabbing content for your readers.

The story of Dave Gorman, a British stand-up comedian, goes like this:

"...instead of trying to think of interesting things to write about for his act, he would do interesting things – and then write about those.

It turns out that people are far more interested in the weird or exciting things you’ve done that in the weird or exciting things you’ve just thought about."

A simple idea like this can truly transform the way you approach writing and the creation of content to build your own reputation and credibility online.

"In other words, doing interesting stuff makes you an interesting person to follow."

Thanks to Ian Brodie for this article of 2012, but as valuable to read now as it was then.

Have you done anything interesting lately? Don't get hung up on what "interesting" means--remember, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld created an entire series around seeing the "interesting" and amusing in the mundane things we do everyday. Few of us have the freedom (or money) to travel the globe doing interestingly mundane things, but we DO things every day that are more interesting than we might think!

Good usability and web design advice from Neil Patel, who points out eight key things to pay serious attention to when optimizing your page content and layout, based on what eye-tracking data reports show.

I can only confirm, that based on my own experience as a web publisher, these eight points are indeed all very important and often underestimated.

In particular I'd like to highlight three:

1) Info chunks are best

2) You need a lot of white space

3) Use pictures of people

Read the full article to get better insight and understanding on why these factors are important and why it is useful to do something about them.

5 minute read, it summarizes the key findings from eye tracking studies. No surprises (above the fold, big chunks, etc.) but it is nice to see all this in a single article. Annoying popup ads, just dismiss them to get to the post.

When you’re doing your site's SEO, you have to be careful. The techniques that used to work will now get you penalized. The techniques that used to be a w

Robin Good's insight:

While SEO experts keep saying that "search engine optimization" is not dead, it's only changing, I am quite happy to see that more and more of the SEO techniques that have been promoted as the "smart" way to make anyone web site more visible, are finally crumbling down one by one.

In this excellent article, Neil Patel, identifies five of them, that carry more big risks than benefits for anyone web publisher still adopting them. These are:

1) Guest Blogging (spammy kind)

2) Incoming Links with Optimized Anchor Text

3) Low quality inbound links

4) Using lots of relevant keywords inside your content

5) Relying more on building inbound links than on creating high-value content

Excellent recommendations for anyone publishing online. It's time for those who have quality ideas and content to regain their due value and visibility, stolen for so long by those who, without either one, invested fanatically in content marketing and search engine optimizing without ever creating real value.

Fliplingo allows you to communicate on Twitter in multiple languages. Choose the languages and the translation quality you need, and enjoy tweeting with the World.

Robin Good's insight:

Fliplingo is a new web app which allows you to translate, either automatically, or with the help of a professional human translator, your tweets into one or more languages.

You simply hook up your Twitter account(s) and then can create a "flip", or a preset that will take care of translating all of your upcoming tweets into your specified language either by manual human translation or automatically.

You can test the service and the human translation by using the free credits that are available in your account as you open it (30 human credits and 300 machine credits. This equals to about 2 tweets that can be human translated and 20 machine-translated ones).

For $29/mo you can 300 words human translated (about 30 tweets) and unlimited machine translated tweets over a max of three different Twitter accounts.

My comment: Excellent tool for content marketers needing to reach out to international audiences on Twitter. Easy, cost-effective.

The Worst Idea Ever in my opinion, communicating with native speakers is not about translating (oftenly wrong) it is about understanding the "untold" about using colloquialisms about reading between the lines and understanding the culture.

Remember only 20% of our communication is done verbally, 80% is non-verbal or indirect.

If you are looking for concrete examples of how you can significantly improve user adoption of your new online service, you better check out this new mini-site dedicated to illustrate in detail how popular online services turn the sign-up and getting started process into a success.

For each service reviewed you can flip through an illustrated slideshow that highlights each and every detail that makes a difference in the signup process.

If you re looking for great articles, resources and guides about content strategy and its characteristics, you have found what you were looking for.

Jontahon Colman, has curated an excellent catalogue of the best resources on content strategy resources available online.

From books, to magazines, journals, blogs, articles, forums and events, this annotated list has plenty of valuable resources and it is definitely a valuable reference asset to save for anyone interested in deepening his knowledge about content strategy.

Trendwatching.com, a web magazine devoted to analyze, research and report about upcoming consumer trends, has released the Consumer Trend Canvas (inspired by Alex Osterwalder's).

The free CTC has been designed for anyone interested in looking deeper into the innovation and business opportunities available by looking into the specific traits of new consumer trends.

The Consumer Trend Canvas per se is nothing else but a printable PDF framework that contains instructions, tips and examples as well as a full-page structured canvas that help you analyze any possible consumer trend.

"An easy-to-follow framework that will help you not only unpack and understand any consumer trend, but also help you apply it to launch successful consumer-facing innovations of your own."

An easy-to-follow framework that will help you not only unpack andunderstand any consumer trend, but also help you apply it to launchsuccessful consumer-facing innovations of your own.

How & when to use the CONSUMER TREND CANVAS:Download your blank Consumer Trend CanvasTake the trend that you are interested in exploring further (either from us, or elsewhere!).As you analyze the trend, fill out the left hand side of the canvas (‘Understand’) with insights, data and examples. Then use the ‘Apply’ section on the right hand side to capture your ideas.Keep on circling back to re-examine how the segments relate to each other. Insights in one segment may highlight other elements of the trend and help you uncover truly novel concepts.Also, try using it to structure an innovation session with your team or a client. Then enjoy that ‘a-ha!’ moment as people both understand what a trend is all about, and how to make the most of it ;)

A significant percentage of working-age Mexicans (PEA: economically active population) have no chance of finding a job as an employee, so it needs to develop the ability to use tools for self-employed or start a business. A useful tool is the Business Model Canvas, which allows a review sheet nine key concepts that has any business, and develop knowledge and actions that increase the likelihood that the company move forward.

"Google is breaching an agreement that it has had with marketers for years.." says Randy Fishkin of SEOMoz, one of the foremost SEO world experts, when it comes to the recent Google decision to obscure up to 75% of all keyword search data.

The tacit agreement by which search engines would cooperate with their users by sharing search data and using it to improve the service provided seems to have reached the end of the road.

Fishkin is quite preoccupied by this and hopes that the EU may take action on this in some way while the US sits watching.

Other alternatives to fight back appear quite utopian:

"In theory marketers could fight back by excluding Google from crawling and indexing their sites. But the only way this would work is if tens of millions of sites all did it together."

Even Search Engine Land founder Danny Sullivan takes a strong position on this by stating himself: "“...a fairly large breach in the unwritten contract that’s long existed between search engines and publishers.

Publishers allow search engines to index their content, which is used by the search engines as the core content they can put lucrative ads around.

In return, search engines have provided traffic to publishers and data on how those publishers are found. That latter part of the ‘deal’ was unilaterally pulled by Google.”"

Morale of the story: Whether or not you think SEO is good or bad and whether you think it is going to die or not, one thing stands certain for the near future: SEO specialists will have a much harder time proving that what they do actually works. Period.

I agree with one of the commentors on this post, that said, Google is doing this in response to the competition with FB et al. FB is making huge inroads in Googles once great monopoly. You can still find keywords that will rank with reverse attack marketing and can learn about it here: http://www.reverse-attack-marketing.info

I think this video is very accurate. Today, we are bombarded by information about what we should buy, what we should do, etc. How much of this information do we actually retain? Barley nothing! For something to be retained, it has to be rememberable; what's rememberable? STORIES! The video explains stories are rememberable because they are meaningful. The Internet can so easily simplify information to market products, which ends up having so much information about so many different products all the time. If we take the time to explain a story behind a product when marketing it, I think it will be more profitable. STORIES are the new successful marketing strategy in this world filled with noise and information.

In the past month, Google quietly made a change aimed at encrypting all search activity — except for clicks on ads.

Robin Good's insight:

Danny Sullivan reports on SearchEngineLand about the recent quiet change by Google aimed a encryprinting all users search activity.

"Google says this has been done to provide “extra protection” for searchers, and the company may be aiming to block NSA spying activity. Possibly, it’s a move to increase ad sales."

What's the truth? No-one is really sure at the moment, but if you want to find out exactly why this is quite relevant to independent publishers and - better yet - how to still access and archive most of those keywords, read the rest of this good article.

Andrew Gouty analyzes the history of SEO, while highligthing how increasingly important it is to look less at "SEO tactics" and more at producing truly quality content.

The article cum infographic reviews the main five SEO eras, from the 1994-99 Meta era, and through the PageRank years (2000-2003), the Florida era (2004-2009), the Content Era (2010-12) and the Present Day.

A good, fact-supported overview of what really counts when it comes to content visibility on the web.

If you are goal includes marketing and selling information products or services to the adults, entrepreneurs and business men of tomorrow, I recommend you read this short article by Scott Di Marco, who is the Library Director at the University of Mansfield.

Inspired by Stefan Pollack's book "Disrupted", Scott identifies and lists down the key critical points defining the iGeneration:

Generation X was about "us versus the man"

Generation Y was the "me" generation

iGeneration is the "us" generation - together they can change institutions and create the environment they want.

In addition he identifies these specific characterizing traits:

- They strongly rely on recommendation and referrals of friends, peers, and other consumers

- The expert or journalistic critics only matters if they agree with them

- Forget print and TV. They use mobile devices like oxygen

- They want information that's relevant and or funny.

- They look for specific, niche info.

- Ads are ok for them as long as they are relevant and authentic.

- They want a relationship. They do not want to be sold stuff.

Scott Di Marco then goes to on to provide some key insightful recommendations on how to approach these people by listening and adopting a curatorial approach.

My comment: Scott Di Marco's analysis doesn't apply only to the world of libraries. The future of marketing is indeed strongly bound to understanding and respecting the values and traits of the new generations outlined above. Cultivating them can only benefit any company or organization that wants to look at long-term survival.

Little Pork Chop is a supersimple web app which allows you to post to Twitter longer messages than the typical 140 characters, by intelligently splitting your communication into multiple, numbered tweets.

To use it, you simply go the Little Porkchop page, type in or paste your message without worrying about length, and, instantly, the app previews for you how it would split into multiple tweets. You make your adjustments and you are set to tweet.

A couple of nice additional touches include:

1) all of the following tweets after the first one in a sequence, are sent as replies to the first, so that the whole set can be read as a single thread,

2) the option to send tweets in reverse chronological order so that they will show up in the Twitter stream in the order you wrote them.

Little Pork Chop is a supersimple web app which allows you to post to Twitter longer messages than the typical 140 characters, by intelligently splitting your communication into multiple, numbered tweets.

To use it, you simply go the Little Porkchop page, type in or paste your message without worrying about length, and, instantly, the app previews for you how it would split into multiple tweets. You make your adjustments and you are set to tweet.

A couple of nice additional touches include:

1) all of the following tweets after the first one in a sequence, are sent as replies to the first, so that the whole set can be read as a single thread,

2) the option to send tweets in reverse chronological order so that they will show up in the Twitter stream in the order you wrote them.

Little Pork Chop is a supersimple web app which allows you to post to Twitter longer messages than the typical 140 characters, by intelligently splitting your communication into multiple, numbered tweets.

To use it, you simply go the Little Porkchop page, type in or paste your message without worrying about length, and, instantly, the app previews for you how it would split into multiple tweets. You make your adjustments and you are set to tweet.

A couple of nice additional touches include:

1) all of the following tweets after the first one in a sequence, are sent as replies to the first, so that the whole set can be read as a single thread,

2) the option to send tweets in reverse chronological order so that they will show up in the Twitter stream in the order you wrote them.

For the first time ever, Google+ brought fans around the world to show their support at Old Trafford - live. Featuring Lee and Thendo from South Africa, Nina...

Robin Good's insight:

A selected group of Manchester United fans living far away from England have had a unique opportunity offered to them: seeing their favorite soccer team while sitting in the front row of the Old Trafford stadium.

Thanks to Google Hangout technology, connected fans from far away countries have been able to cheer their stars by appearing in real time inside the advertising panels that surround the soccer field while being connected from their original countries.

"For the first time ever, Google+ brought fans around the world to show their support at Old Trafford - live.

Featuring Lee and Thendo from South Africa, Nina from Ethiopia, Jorge from Mexico, Louis from Malaysia, Maria from USA and Hefani from Namibia."

A fantastic way to engage fans and to nurture the Manchester United extended online community.

"A good story can make or break a presentation, article, or conversation. But why is that?"

Robin Good's insight:

Here is why storytelling is so effective and uniquely powerful.

Bufferapp co-founder Leo Widrich has written, back in 2012, a very interesting and informative article on the topic. Here a few passages from it:

"When we tell stories to others that have really helped us shape our thinking and way of life, we can have the same effect on them too.

The brains of the person telling a story and listening to it can synchronize, says Uri Hasson from Princeton:

"When the woman spoke English, the volunteers understood her story, and their brains synchronized. When she had activity in her insula, an emotional brain region, the listeners did too. When her frontal cortex lit up, so did theirs.

By simply telling a story, the woman could plant ideas, thoughts and emotions into the listeners' brains."

A story, if broken down into the simplest form, is a connection of cause and effect. And that is exactly how we think. We think in narratives all day long, no matter if it is about buying groceries, whether we think about work or our spouse at home. We make up (short) stories in our heads for every action and conversation."

EyeQuant instantly predicts how users look at your websites using technology developed by the world's top attention scientists at Caltech. No code required.

Robin Good's insight:

Eyequant is a new web app which allows you to test and analyze instantly and web page design, landing or product page and to visualize for you the areas on the page that readers will pay most attention to.

The app does not require you to install any code or plugin on your site as it leverages scientific research data to evaluate, analyze and predict reader's behavior on any page without needing to use live traffic data.

Once you have submitted a web page by uploading it or by submitting its URL, Eyequant will be able to provide three different visual maps (attention map, hot spots, perception map) of your page showcasing the specific areas where reader's eyes will be drawn.

All visual maps produced by Eyequant can be easily exported to PDF, PPT and ZIP files.

My comment: Excellent resource to gain valuabe insight into how to improve and optimize any web page. Definitely worth trying.

I've never read a book on sales. They seemed corny. Like many people, I always looked down on the concept of "selling." It seemed like something lower than..

Robin Good's insight:

We often manipulate people in order to sell something to them.

According to James Altucher, investor, author and entrepreneur, this is sad, as you really don't have to approach selling in this fashion, if you want to get the maximum results.

Here's a few of the wonderful things he suggest you should really invest in, to sell drastically more:

a) Friendship. Nobody is going to buy from someone they hate. The buyer has to like you and want to be your friend. People pay for friendship.

b) Say No. If you reduce the supply of you (through “No”) then the demand for you goes up and you make more money (and have more fun).

c) Overdeliver. People want to do business with people who give them presents. Over-delivering is a present. And it makes you feel good. Give and you will receive.

d) It's not the product. Stop going to BS entrepreneur, get-rich conferences. In the long run nobody cares about your product. In the long run, it is the entire holistic view of your offering, your service, you, that you are selling.

But there's a lot more good advice than these four points.

He suggests for example to get rid of bad customers, to sell the dream they will experience and not the product, as well as to realize that your very best customers are your existing clients.

If you, like me, don't feel good about selling, marketing and pushing products like most people do online, then you will get a fresh breath of oxygen by reading in full this excellent article.

As Dan Pink says, we are all in sales now. Whether we are selling our ideas, our brands, or real products and services, we are all in sales.

This is a great article about what 'selling' should be. Robin Good's insights combined with this excellent article resonated with me. I think we all need to think about sales in a new light, one that truly focuses on the relationships, trust, and helping others succeed in this crazy and exciting world we live in.

When I talk about story-telling in my courses and workshops, people think immediately that they need special tools to put together images, text and video that can facilitate this task.

Story-telling is both so engrained in our human culture and yet so far removed from our typical marketing approaches that most people selling something online peddle and scream rather than doing what their fathers and grandfathers have done for centuries to sell their properties, skills and products: telling great stories that engage listeners.

Google has done a wonderful job in creating and maintaining a unique collection of self-produced story-telling examples in the form of a growing set of short videos (most are less than 2 mins long).

By viewing them you not only live through an intense, often touching emotional story, but - on the side - without ever pushing it - you get to see how vital and useful Google services can be inside people lives.

The same thing you and me should be doing when promoting our own products and services. Story-telling.

Browse all Facebook pages and discover the most important KPIs and amazing insights. Select the country and category to refine your results.

Robin Good's insight:

Thanks to FanPageKarma, an excellent web app to learn and improve your social media marketing by learning directly from your competitors, has just published a worldwide catalogue of Facebook Fan Pages categorized by sector and country.

For each brand included in the catalogue you can check the existing number of fans, its growth rate and page performance, and compare these with the ones of your own Facebook page.

My comment: This is a great resource to find and collect great examples of effective social media strategies by finding the best performers by country or by specific industry sector.

More people are running to charity tube to post free videos and watch free videos than posting on you tube. Try posting at charity tube and you will never leave. http://www.africatube.net/ More visitors and more video views. Don't take our word for it, try it. Post one same video on youtube and put it on http://www.africatube.net/ and return ater five hours and compare the viewers rate and decide for yourself. Create your very own group or forum and control who watch it and invite everyone to watch the video. Above all, post video in English or in any language and viewers can watch video description in their own language. Try it and let us know your experience. Above all it is absolutely free like youtube

The Hummingbird Google search algorithm isn't about long tail search. It's entirely the opposite. Hummingbird is about taking long-tail, highly unusual and verbose searches, and serving them results as if they were clear short-phrase searches.

Robin Good's insight:

Excellent article by Ammon Johns explaining clearly what the new Google algorithm Hummingbird does and how it really affects the world of search.

Contrary to what has been written by many, Hummingbird changes deeply how Google interprets search queries, especially, long, detailed ones, not the search results directly. This is also why no-one has really seen major changes to web site traffic after Google has introduced the new algo quietly in August.

In simple words, what Google Hummingbird does, in the words of Ammon Johns is: "...making the very concept of many long-tail searches go the same way as referral data.

Google is trying to get away from exact wording to understanding the concepts.

So no matter how verbose or roundabout your search for pizza restaurant in Denver may be, the search it runs is exactly the same as “Denver Pizza Restaurant”, “Pizza Restaurant Denver”, etc."

Read the full article and the examples provided and you will get a good gist of it.

Last week, Google moved to send all searches through Google SSL Search, setting up the ultimate end of keyword data passed along via referrers non-advertisers.

Robin Good's insight:

Danny Sullivan reports today on Search Engine Land: "Last week, Google moved to send all searches through Google SSL Search, setting up the ultimate end of keyword data passed along via referrers non-advertisers. Now, Google’s official alternative channel for this information — Google Webmaster Tools — has also stopped sharing the data, most likely due to a bug."

You can check for yourself: go to your Google Webmaster Tools and see if you see any referrer data past Sept.25th. I don't. What about you?

James Carson on SmartInsights outlines the value of adopting a story to be more effective in selling your brand, products or services. He specifically points to a specific story plot generally known as the "hero's journey".

This is a story pattern that can be found in tens of popular stories around

the world.

From Homer's Odissey to Star Wars you can see the same story pattern at work.

You "can use this kind of story arc in a content marketing strategy through switching the protagonist with the customer, and then offer mentorship through the content, and the promise of reward (or quest completion) from the product."

I include this is the ServingExperience collection because a company that exists, follows and thrives upon the ServingExperience way will have a story, and stories that are sincere and true (essential for them to work for a company) and these will also (need to) be truly embraced from CEO to kitchen towel supply supervisor - then and only then does story, brand and reputation float on the high seas of the marketplace.

One of the most popular strategies utilized by those are new to content curation is to create "lists" of resources, articles or tools that are useful for a particular domain and tribe.

In this article by Casudi Di Diego you can find four real-world examples of how crowd-curated lists can be effectively utilized to create value and as a consequence to produce more inbound links, visibility and spontaneous sharing across social media.

If you want to find out which specific web pages from your competitor websites are shared the most across social media you can now do so without having to spend a penny by simply logging into Social Crawlytics and providing the URL of the site you want to be analyzed.

The results you can get in a matter of minutes are pretty impressive. At a glance you can see which content from any web site you decide to analyze, has been shared the most across social media. Social Crawlytics takes into account all social shares that have taken place across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, Google+, Pinterest and StumbleUpon, providing you with individual data points for each network.

Social Crawlytics also offers an open API which can be used to automate data collection, querying and reporting.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.